From Out In The Film Noir Night- With Robert Cummings’s Sleep, My Love In Mind

DVD Review

Sleep, My Love, Robert Cummings, Claudette Colbert, directed by Douglas Sirk, 1948

Daphne Swann was a piece of work, a piece of work alright. She could have a man, men actually, wrapped around her tiny finger, wrapped around tight and make them like it. Make them think it was natural. And she had all the equipment for the work, long dark hair, brown eyes, big ruby red lips, and a models’ figure, not a high fashion model’s figure, they were too skinny she said, but a department store model’s, something a man could hold onto, and hold onto dreams about. She said give her a few nights with a man, or rather a man with her, and he would do anything she asked, anything. Sometimes like with her boss, Four-eyes (real name Bruce Lang but with those bi-focals nothing else seemed to fit), she didn’t even have to spent the night, she could piece him off with a couple of, uh, provocative photos of her to sell to discerning customers and that was all he needed to be her lap dog. See she “worked” for Bruce as, uh, model and assistant in his photography shop and that was how she met Mister Abbott. Mister Abbott, a real catch, a meal ticket out of sleazy photos, men pawing modeling and the whole cheap Four-eyes gaff.

Mister Abbott had come into the shop one afternoon looking to have a photograph taken for a passport. While he was waiting he had spied Daphne going about in a revealing swim suit after a shoot and struck up a conversation. (Little did he know that Daphne had eyed him, eyed him as a catch, as simple bait, as he entered the door and put had on her fangs.) That conversation led to a swanky dinner led to an uptown hotel bedroom and a few days later one Mister William Abbott was hooked, hooked bad, hooked as bad as a man could be about a woman. He would do anything she asked, anything.

Bill Abbot, it turned out, was from a branch of the famous Abbotts that worked their wills in Wall Street and peopled the upscale Sutton Place apartments of New York City. And married other Mayfair swells like the Penningtons. See Bill was from what he described as the declining gentry, the poor relatives Abbotts, who nevertheless were pedigreed enough to make marriages with the families with real dough. Families like the Elliott Penningtons, one of whose daughters, Cora, Bill had married. But she had control of all the dough, all the dough until she died and that was that. Bill would have to wait it out. Well, not quite because Daphne dreamed, dreamed night and day about getting out from under cheap street and she didn’t particularly care how she got out. So when she presented her plan, her ultimatum plan to Bill he didn’t think twice about refusing, especially since it seemed so fool-proof.

And it was to a point. See guys like Bill Abbott, and even a woman like Daphne draw back at old-fashion murder, draw back at taking the big step-off at Ossining and places like that where they would not be able to enjoy earthly goods, So Daphne‘s idea was to get the high- strung Cora to kill herself, aided by an unrelenting program directed by Bill to lead her along that path. Then a quick jump off a building or something like that and easy street. Bill loved the idea, and moved to implement it as quickly as possible. He had real skill at making Cora doubt her sanity. When Bill told Daphne each detail over pillows she practically salivated.  

Of course one virtue of old-fashioned murder is that it gets done, and is then done. Finished.  This murder cum suicide is trickier. It requires a willing subject and good luck. And that is just what Bill and Daphne did not have in the end. They were doing just fine until Chad Smith , a brother of a classmate of Cora’s at Miss Prissy’s, or something like that, boarding school, came down from Boston and started to gum up the works. He was smitten with Cora and thus parried, first unknowingly, then knowingly, each psychological blow Bill threw at her. It got so bad that Bill and Daphne decided to try some other more direct way, like an ambush. That didn’t work, didn’t work at all as Bill became a victim of his own over-cleverness and was shot, shot dead, in self-defense (or that would be the way it would work out in front of a jury) by Cora directing the fire his way at Chad’s command. Poor Daphne will spend many a cold night thinking through what might have been, a place on Sutton and everything.

Hold on, hold on a minute with your handkerchiefs and tears, Daphne Swann was no fool. See Chad had entered the picture at her request. Chad was as smitten Daphne as any other man she fancied and had been brought in by her from Boston when it did not look like Bill was going to be successful. Besides she wanted the Pennington dough and position herself and not doled out by Bill. So if one morning you wake up and see in the newspapers where Cora Smith (nee Pennington) killed herself, or died under mysterious circumstances, you will know what really happened. Yah, that Daphne Swann was a piece of work, a real piece of work.